-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Seventy years ago this week , President Franklin Roosevelt signed the GI Bill of Rights , formally the Servicemen 's Readjustment Act , which the House of Representatives and Senate passed unanimously . It authorized unemployment compensation for a maximum of 52 weeks and guaranteed farm , home and business loans up to $ 2,000 to World War II veterans .

Most importantly , by providing up to four years of education and training at annual tuition rates of up to $ 500 -LRB- the rate then charged by Harvard -RRB- , plus a monthly living stipend , the bill made it possible for GIs to attend any college or university that would accept them .

That was then .

In 2014 , the promise of full and equal access to higher education for men and women in the armed services , and , for that matter , for all academically qualified Americans , has not been fulfilled . Family income , not a concerted national initiative , still dictates whether students , including servicemen and women , go to college and which institutions they attend .

More than 2 million World War II veterans went to college on the GI Bill . At least a quarter of them could not have done this without it . Many excelled ; GIs appeared with regularity on honors rolls and deans lists . And they more than paid back the investment that had been made in them . Many of them achieved higher occupational status , more job security , better health and pension benefits and paid more taxes than their peers .

They joined 50 % more civic and political organizations and voted more frequently than their contemporaries in post-war America , according to Suzanne Mettler , author of `` Soldiers to Citizens : The GI Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation '' and a professor of government at Cornell University .

They also upended a pervasive assumption at the time that college was best suited to affluent Americans . Influenced no doubt by the performance of the first wave of GI Bill students , the 1947 Truman Commission , Higher Education in American Democracy , called for `` free and universal access to higher education '' for all Americans based on the interests , needs , and abilities of each student , but without regard to race , creed , sex , national origin or economic circumstances .

The GI Bill and the Truman Commission Report touched off a golden age of higher education in the United States . Thanks in no small measure to funding for financial aid and research from states and the federal government , the number of undergraduates increased five-fold from 1945 to 1975 , and graduate students nine-fold , according to Clay Shirky in `` The End of Higher Education 's Golden Age . ''

In the past 70 years , GI Bill benefits have become significantly less generous than the provisions of the Servicemen 's Readjustment Act of 1944 . The Korean GI Bill of 1952 , the Veterans Readjustment Benefits Act of 1966 and the Montgomery GI Bill of 1985 fell far short of covering tuition and fees at many public and private colleges and universities .

While 52 % of World War II veterans enrolled in private colleges and universities under the GI Bill , only 20 % of the veterans of Korea and Vietnam were able to do so . It has become more difficult to ask , as Time magazine did in the 1940s , `` Why go to Podunk College when the government will send you to Yale ? ''

Although Sen. James Webb wanted his GI Bill , signed into law by President George W. Bush on June 30 , 2008 , to give veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan `` the same educational chance that ` The Greatest Generation ' had , '' it provided tuition payments only up to the most expensive in-state public university and restricted eligibility to individuals who spent three years or more on active duty .

More generally , state appropriations for all higher education in recent years have leveled off or gone down , and federal funding for financial aid for undergraduates has not kept pace with the cost of attendance at public or private institutions . The maximum Pell grant , which accounted for about four-fifths of the cost at an average public university in the '70s , now covers about 31 % .

Little wonder , then , that three of four individuals from families in the top quartile of the economic distribution have received undergraduate degrees by age 24 , but only one of five in the third tier and one of 10 in the fourth -- and the median debt at graduation is rising rapidly . Or that the United States is no longer at the top -- or even near the top -- of countries that send the highest percentage of their young people to college .

More than ever , it is clear that educational achievement promotes economic growth , helps our nation compete in world markets and leads to high incomes as well as individual fulfillment .

So let 's mark the 70th birthday of the GI Bill not just by celebrating one of the greatest pieces of legislation in American history . We must also insist that Congress make it a high priority to provide the opportunity for our servicemen and women -- and for all young men and women in the United States -- to use higher education to fulfill the American Dream and go as far and as fast as their ambition , discipline and talent will take them .

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Glenn Altschuler : 70 years ago , FDR signed GI Bill ; more than 2 million went to college on it

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After later wars , America 's promise of higher education to vets diminshed , he says

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He says GI Bill paid off : Vets got better jobs , were more civicly engaged , paid more taxes

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Writer : Congress must reprioritize this educational pact with vets and all Americans